June, 21 2022, 01:24pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jessica Gable, Food & Water Watch, jgable@fwwatch.org
Thomas Joseph, Indigenous Environmental Network, ThomasJoseph@IENEarth.org
Maya Golden-Krasner, Center for Biological Diversity, mgoldenkrasner@
Climate, Justice Groups Slam California Climate Plan Ahead of Hearing
Groups Demand Gov. Newsom, Air Resources Board Lead Rapid Transition Off Fossil Fuels to Protect Communities, Climate
WASHINGTON
Over 150 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of members sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) slamming the agency's proposed 2022 Draft Scoping Plan as wholly inadequate. The groups say the climate blueprint falls far short of the breadth and urgency needed to confront the climate and environmental justice crises. CARB will host a hearing to discuss the plan on June 23. The letter's ambitious but achievable demands include:
- Reach near-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035;
- Phase out oil and gas production and transition to 100% clean, renewable electricity by 2030;
- Require all new car sales to be 100% electric vehicles by 2030 and scale up clean public transit;
- Reject industry distractions like carbon capture, hydrogen, dirty bioenergy and carbon trading;
- Prioritize direct emissions reductions that support immediate relief for overburdened communities of color and Indigenous Peoples and abandon carbon offset programs that lead to more pollution.
In its current form, the 2022 Draft Scoping Plan sets a vague and misleading target of 'carbon neutrality' by 2045, allowing the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting and failing to slash emissions at the scale and pace that the climate crisis demands.. The plan relies heavily on carbon trading and offset programs like the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), criticized by grassroots and environmental justice organizations for its use of public funds to bankroll emissions-heavy bioenergy projects in low-income communities.
The letter also calls for the plan to prioritize the voices of those historically left out of California's environmental decisions, including communities of color and Indigenous Peoples, whose homes have become sacrifice zones on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction. By consulting with these communities, rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, and investing in clean, cost-effective energy solutions like solar, wind and battery storage, California can repair the drastic holes in CARB's current plan.
The letter's signatories released the following statements in response to the letter's delivery:
"Indigenous Peoples of California have seen firsthand the desecration of our ancestral lands by the state of California and its extractive and polluting industries. Governor Newsom has an opportunity to change this destructive legacy by revising the 2022 draft Scoping Plan to stop the release of fossil fuel emissions at the source and end carbon neutrality mechanisms that prop up industry scams like carbon capture techno-fixes, carbon trading and offsets, hydrogen and bioenergy. These are not real solutions that will halt the devastation of fires and extreme water shortage," said Thomas Joseph, Hoopa Valley Tribal member and organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. "The time is now for the California Air Resources Board to put our communities first; before the polluting corporations. Governor Newsom, end this legacy of genocide against Indigenous Peoples and ecocide against Mother Earth and Father Sky. We need real solutions to end this climate crisis."
"If Governor Newsom is serious about addressing the climate crisis, he and the California Air Resources Board must stop kicking the can down the road and stop entertaining fossil fuel industry schemes like carbon capture and hydrogen," said Mark Schlosberg, Acting California Director of Food & Watch Watch. "California and the world are waiting for his leadership in moving us back from the climate cliff. This means setting aggressive goals for electrification of transit and buildings, stopping new fossil fuel drilling and infrastructure, and replacing dirty fuels with truly renewable energy by 2030."
"Californians getting scorched by heat waves in June can't wait for vague climate promises about 2045," said Maya Golden-Krasner, deputy director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "Gov. Newsom needs to send CARB back to the drawing board for a blueprint that locks in climate protection, not decades of fossil fuel pollution. We have the technology to protect people and the planet. What we need now is the political will to make a clean, climate-safe California a reality."
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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Yanis Varoufakis hailed the effort as "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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"Coups. Assassinations. Riots. Detentions. Disinformation. We know the tactics that have been deployed to undermine our democracies. But who is behind them?"
Progressive International (PI) asks and answers this and other questions with an extensive new database published Wednesday that connects the dots in what the leftist group calls the "Reactionary International"—a loose global network of right-wing leaders and organizations working to subvert democratic institutions.
PI calls it an "illicit network undermining democracy around the world."
"Today is a mask-off moment for the Reactionary International and the parties, politicians, judges, journalists, foundations, think tanks, tech platforms, NGOs, activists, financiers, and entrepreneurs that comprise it," PI said.
"After a year of preparation, we finally open the doors to our new research consortium, exposing the global network of reactionary forces that corrode our democracies, destroy our planet, and drive us closer to world war," the group added.
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From leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former U.S. President Donald Trump—the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee—to evangelical Christian groups influencing laws in African countries criminalizing LGBTQ+ people and tech companies empowering ubiquitous state surveillance, Reactionary International is a who's-who of the world's right-wing forces.
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Yanis Varoufakis, a PI member and secretary-general of the left-wing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, called the database "a treasure chest of well-researched reports on how the reactionaries of the world unite."
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Led by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, Republican leaders in 23 states on Tuesday filed a petition making clear their aim to allow petrochemical companies and other corporations to continue operating pollution-causing facilities without regard for the "disparate impact" they can have on low-income communities of color.
The attorneys general of states including Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas wrote to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, asking him to amend Title VI under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The law prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating against residents based on race and national origin and allows residents to petition the EPA arguing that state agencies have intentionally discriminated or disparately impacted a particular community.
Title VI has underpinned hundreds of legal cases, including recent EPA investigations into the 85-mile stretch of land in Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, where dozens of petrochemical plants have been built and health experts have observed a disproportionate number of cancer cases and other medical problems among the predominantly Black population.
The attorneys general said they object to the Biden administration's use of Title VI to "advance what it calls 'environmental justice,'" and complained that the EPA aims to create "a condition in which no racially or economically defined group experiences adverse environmental impacts."
Andre Segura, vice president of litigation at the environmental legal group Earthjustice, said Wednesday that the Republican attorneys general aim to "eviscerate civil rights protections just to make it easier for industrial polluters to continue with business as usual."
"Everyone should be alarmed by these outrageous efforts," said Segura. "The fact is, many of the states that have signed the petition have historically allowed these harmful facilities to be placed in predominantly Black and brown communities, without regard for the health and safety of residents."
Manuel Fernandez, president of Miami-Dade County Democrats in Florida, said the effort was "embarrassing" and called on Moody to resign.
The petition was filed three months after U.S. District Court Judge James Cain Jr., an appointee of former President Donald Trump in Louisiana, ruled that Title VI requirements amount to "government overreach."
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As Volkswagen workers in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers, progressive critics on Wednesday continued to call out six Southern GOP governors for jointly saying they "are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas issued their statement in response to "the largest organizing drive in modern American history," which the UAW launched after major contract wins following a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—last year.
"As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by," the Republican leaders said, claiming that "unionization would certainly put our states' jobs in jeopardy" and the UAW is "making big promises to our constituents that they can't deliver on."
"We have serious reservations that the UAW leadership can represent our values. They proudly call themselves democratic socialists and seem more focused on helping President [Joe] Biden get reelected than on the autoworker jobs being cut at plants they already represent," the governors added, nodding to the union's January endorsement of the Democrat—UAW president Shawn Fain also called the presumptive Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, a "scab."
What actually threatens American workers?\n\u274c Anti-union, anti-worker propaganda like this\n\ud83d\udcb0 Corps that put profits over people\n\u26d1\ufe0f Safety standards not being met\n\n@GovAbbott & @GovernorKayIvey sound more like corporate lobbyists than governors here. @UAW backs American workers!— (@)
The Economic Policy Institutesaid Wednesday that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
Responding to the statement on social media, the Congressional Labor Caucus declared that "we speak up when we see threats to workers' rights. Workers must be allowed to choose whether to form a union on their own—free from influence from their employers or politicians. Shame on these governors for putting out this anti-union propaganda."
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Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, also took aim at Ivey, saying, "You used Alabama taxpayers' money to have state troopers escort out-of-state scabs to break the strike of YOUR constituents."
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More Perfect Union told Ivey that "unions only threaten your values if you value denying workers a living wage and good benefits."
In contrast with the Republican governors, around two-thirds of the Senate Democratic Caucus in January wrote to 13 nonunion automakers—including Mercedes and Volkswagen—urging them not to illegally block UAW organizing at their plants.
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