July, 15 2022, 02:56pm EDT
STOP Asks Biden to Finally Take Action on His Own, Declare Climate Emergency After Manchin Pulls Plug On Climate Investments
Last night, Senator Joe Manchin announced he would not support any investments in climate and clean energy in the reconciliation budget deal-dooming what could have been the largest climate change bill in U.S. history.
In response, Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for STOP (Stop the Oil Profiteering) released the following statement:
WASHINGTON
Last night, Senator Joe Manchin announced he would not support any investments in climate and clean energy in the reconciliation budget deal-dooming what could have been the largest climate change bill in U.S. history.
In response, Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for STOP (Stop the Oil Profiteering) released the following statement:
"Senator Manchin, a coal baron who regularly puts his own financial interests ahead of his life constituents, has taken more campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry than anyone else in Washington - and Big Oil just got their return on that investment.
The climate provisions proposed in the reconciliation package were only the bare minimum required to address the climate crisis, and now we've lost two years under a pro-climate president trying to appease a fossil fuel puppet, backed by every single Republican Senator.
President Biden has talked about the need for climate action repeatedly, calling the situation a "code red" emergency. Now it's time for his actions to match his rhetoric. Biden must immediately declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act and rapidly deploy massive clean energy investments now before it's too late. President Biden has a choice: he can keep his word and act boldly on the climate crisis or go down in history with Manchin as a failure who put politics before the survival of our communities and our planet."
Fossil Free Media is a nonprofit media lab that supports the movement to end fossil fuels and address the climate emergency.
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Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
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"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
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"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
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Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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