June, 23 2023, 08:52am EDT
Empty seats and empty words at Paris Summit leave fossil fuel culprits off the hook
PARIS
In response to the conclusion of the Summit, experts at Oil Change International said:
On overall outcomes, Bronwen Tucker, Global Public Finance co-lead at Oil Change International said:
“Global leaders at the Paris Summit missed a critical opportunity to redirect billions from fossil fuels, debt, and the ultra rich to address the climate crisis. Wealthy country leaders with both an outsized control over our global financial rules and institutions and an outsized responsibility for our global crises were largely absent. Those who did attend relied on old “we can’t pay for it” excuses, forwarding failed private-sector first approaches, and letting fossil culprits off the hook. Wealthy country leaders must listen to the advice over 150 economists gave at the start of this Summit: taxing extreme wealth, canceling public external debts in low income countries, ending fossil fuel handouts, and instead making the companies pay for their damages, would raise more than $3 trillion a year to slow the climate crisis. Looking ahead to COP28, the good news is that a growing contingent of Global South leaders are showing the way forward by building affordable renewable energy and holding their Northern peers accountable to pay their fair share.
On multilateral development banks (MDBs), Claire O’Manique, Global Public Finance Analyst at Oil Change International said:
“The World Bank Group was in the spotlight this week for its report calling on countries to end harmful fossil fuel subsidies and repurpose these funds to support climate solutions. The Bank must take its own advice— currently, it provides more public finance for fossil fuels than any other multilateral development bank, and it still pushes new fossil subsidies through development policy finance. As long as the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) continue to pour more fuel on the fire, they cannot be trusted to deliver on the solutions needed to tackle the climate crisis.”
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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'Tragic and Unjust': Trump Judges Grant Biden DOJ Request to Toss Youth Climate Case
"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
May 02, 2024
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
"I have been pleading for my government to hear our case since I was 10 years old, and I am now nearly 19," said McRae. "A functioning democracy would not make a child beg for their rights to be protected in the courts, just to be ignored nearly a decade later. I am fed up with the continuous attempts to squash this case and silence our voices."
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"An offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable."
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Dozens of U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday joined Congresswomen Pramila Jayapal and Madeleine Dean in pressuring President Joe Biden to prevent a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip that's now full of over a million displaced Palestinians.
"We write with urgency to say: an offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable," states the letter from Jayapal (D-Wash.), Dean (D-Pa.), and 55 other members of Congress. "We welcome your administration's efforts to dissuade the Israeli government from this military operation, which would deepen both the humanitarian catastrophe for people in Gaza and the strategic challenges that regional and global stakeholders face in this conflict."
"We now urge you to enforce U.S. law and policy by withholding certain offensive weaponry or other military support that can be used for an assault on Rafah, including the offensive weaponry and aid already signed into law," the letter continues.
The Democrats highlighted how Israel's retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack has impacted the city:
Rafah has become one of the most overcrowded places in the world. With shelters too full and insufficient, many families now live on the streets. The collapsed health infrastructure, in addition to sewage overflow and the scarcity of food, water, and medicine, has accelerated the onset of severe malnutrition and the spread of communicable diseases. Acute food insecurity is endemic in Rafah, even as the international community circulates credible reports that famine is setting in elsewhere in Gaza—all as a result of six months of military operations that you have described as "indiscriminate." In addition, we know in fact that Israeli strikes on Rafah have already occurred, including one on April 20th that killed 18 people, including 14 children.
Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have killed 34,568 people and wounded another 77,765—mostly women and children—while leaving thousands more missing in the rubble of bombed buildings, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Biden has resisted mounting global pressure to limit or fully cut off military aid to Israel, which the International Court of Justice in January concluded is "plausibly" committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. That case is ongoing.
"In addition to the catastrophic civilian toll—and risk to as many as 130 hostages, including as many as six or more Americans—an offensive in Rafah would ultimately undermine the Israeli and U.S. governments' strategic interests," the Democrats argued. "Israeli and U.S. military bases in the region have recently been the targets of repeated drone and missile attacks—a dangerous indication of how unstable the Middle East has become as a result of the Gaza war."
"An Israeli offensive in Rafah risks the start of yet another escalatory spiral, immediately putting the region back on the brink of a broader war that neither Israel nor the United States can afford," they warned. Along with calling on the president to withhold aid to Israel to protect civilians in Rafah, the lawmakers urged Biden to keep working "toward achieving a lasting cease-fire that will bring hostages home and build a path toward safety and security for all."
They also said that "it is of the utmost importance that both Hamas and Israel immediately come to the table with the international community for a mutually agreed ceasefire deal that can secure the safe return of hostages, full resumption of humanitarian aid, and the space for a negotiated, long-term peace in the region."
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In a joint statement last month, the Washington Democrat and 18 of her colleagues said that "our votes against H.R. 8034 are votes against supplying more offensive weapons that could result in more killings of civilians in Rafah and elsewhere."
Israeli Prime Minister "Benjamin Netanyahu appears willing to sacrifice the hostages while inflicting extraordinary suffering on the people of Gaza. He is willing to expand this conflict to preserve his power at the expense of Israel's safety," they continued, noting concerns about an invasion of Rafah. "When faced with the question of whether to provide offensive aid to further this conflict, we believe there is a moral imperative to find another path."
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"The times of genocide and extermination of an entire people cannot return," said leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro. "If Palestine dies, humanity dies."
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In sharp contrast with Columbia University in New York City, Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday announced the imminent suspension of diplomatic relations with Israel over that country's assault on Gaza.
"The government of change informs that as of tomorrow diplomatic relations with Israel will be broken... for having a government, for having a president who is genocidal," Petro told a crowd in the capital Bogotá during an International Workers' Day event, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The world could be summed up in a single word that vindicates the necessity of life, rebellion, the raised flag, and resistance," the leftist leader added. "That word is called Gaza. It is called Palestine. It is called the children and babies who have died dismembered by the bombs."
"The times of genocide and extermination of an entire people cannot return. If Palestine dies, humanity dies," he added as the crowd started chanting, "Petro! Petro! Petro!"
Colombia joins at least nine other nations—including Bahrain, Belize, Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Honduras, Jordan, South Africa, and Turkey—that have either recalled their ambassadors from Israel or broken off relations in response to Israel's assault on Gaza, which has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 123,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced around 90% of the besieged strip's 2.3 million people.
In late October, Colombia became one of the first countries to recall its ambassador from Israel, a move that came amid a diplomatic fracas between Bogotá and Tel Aviv sparked by Petro's comparison of Israeli leaders' dehumanizing and genocidal statements about Palestinians with "what the Nazis said about the Jews."
Petro also called Gaza—often described as the "world's largest open-air prison"—a "concentration camp."
After Israel accused Petro of "hostile and antisemitic statements" and "support for the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists," the Colombian president hit back, saying Israel's war on Gaza is "genocide."
Last month, Colombia asked the International Court of Justice to join the South African-led genocide case against Israel, which is supported by over 30 nations. In January, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling that found Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza and ordered its government to prevent genocidal acts.
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