October, 24 2023, 08:38am EDT
IEA Energy Outlook Report – Greenpeace Reaction
PARIS
In response to the release of the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook report, Kaisa Kosonen, Policy Coordinator, Greenpeace International said:
“We now have everything we need to solve this crisis but it hinges on governments acting with the political courage to make a fast and fair plan to end climate-wrecking fossil fuels. The priority of this year’s UN Climate Conference has to be a global agreement to end the use of oil, coal and gas urgently and fairly, starting with an immediate end to all new fossil fuel projects.
“Solar and wind energy are set to grow exponentially, making clean, renewable energy more attractive, accessible and economical than ever before – but that alone won’t deliver if leaders fail to regulate fossil fuels out of the way. Renewable energy and efficiency goals are welcome but must be accompanied by a commitment to phase out climate-wrecking fossil fuels, with a substantial decline this critical decade.
“Every new fossil fuel project is in stark violation of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit – leaders simply cannot claim to be in support of global action on climate change while supporting fossil fuel expansion. We need a fast and fair plan to phase-out polluting fossil fuels that are killing us. Those who’ve polluted and profited the most must be made accountable and financially support the most vulnerable people, communities, and countries in their transition to clean, renewable energy.”
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Jewish Groups Decry House Passage of Bill Defining Criticism of Israel as 'Antisemitism'
"Antisemitism is a serious problem, but codifying a legal definition could have dangerous implications for free speech," said one campaigner.
May 01, 2024
House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
House members approved the
Antisemitism Awareness Act—bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the lower chamber and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate—by a vote of 320-91.
Both progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans opposed language in the bill. The former objected to conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, while the latter bristled at labeling Christian scripture—which posits that Jews killed Jesus—as antisemitic.
"Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn't need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places," Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the Jewish-led group Americans for Peace Now, said following Wednesday's vote.
"They aren't interested in protecting Jews," he added. "They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying 'antisemite' at everyone, including Jews" who oppose Israel's far-right government.
"With this disingenuous effort, House Republicans have failed to seriously address antisemitism," Susskind added. "I hope the Senate does better."
The legislation—officially H.R. 6090—would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by antisemitic animus and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," including colleges and universities.
Lawler's office called the proposal "a key step in calling out antisemitism where it is and ensuring antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses are properly investigated and prosecuted," while Gottheimer emphasized that "the IHRA definition underscores that antisemitism includes denying Jewish self-determination to their ancestral homeland of Israel... and applying double standards to Israel."
Critics say that's the trouble with the IHRA working definition: It conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a "plausibly" genocidal war on Gaza.
As the ACLU noted last week in a letter urging lawmakers to reject the legislation:
The IHRA working definition... is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education's legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment. But the IHRA working definition declares that "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor," "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," and "applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation" are all examples of antisemitism.
Jewish Voice for Peace Action
slammed what it called IHRA's "controversial and dangerous mis-definition that does not help fight real antisemitism and is only a tool for silencing the movement for Palestinian rights."
"The Israeli government's bombardment and siege of Gaza has killed over 34,000 people in six months," the group said on social media. "Congress must stop attacking the students and faculty members who are trying to stop this genocide, and instead focus on ending U.S. complicity in Israel's attacks."
Israel's Gaza onslaught has sparked a wave of nonviolent student-led protests across the United States and around the world. Some of these protests have been violently repressed by police, while anti-genocide activists including Jews have been branded "antisemitic" for condemning Israeli crimes or defending Palestinians' legal right to resist them.
Sending in militarized police and snipers to stop students from exercising their First Amendment rights is truly disgusting.
Why are my colleagues and the mainstream media more outraged over these anti-war protests than they are about the over 35,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/EwLqRrS2we
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 1, 2024
Americans for Peace Now said that while it is "deeply concerned about the escalating antisemitism in the United States and globally," the legislation "poses a significant threat to free speech and open discourse."
"Equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is a tactic used to stifle important discussions on Israeli policies and actions, thereby hindering the broader effort to combat true instances of hatred and discrimination against Jewish communities," the group added.
Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate and lead drafter of the IHRA working definition, warned years ago that "Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently antisemitic and must be suppressed."
"Imagine if Black Lives Matter said the most important thing the [Biden] administration could do to remedy systemic racism is adopt a definition of racism, and that definition included this example: opposition to affirmative action," Stern wrote in 2020.
"Obviously, sometimes opposition to affirmative action is racist and sometimes it is not," he added. "The debate about systemic racism would be changed to a free speech fight, and those with reasonable concerns about affirmative action correctly upset that the state was branding them racist."
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Senate Hearing Exposes Big Oil's 'Campaign of Deception and Distraction'
"Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public," Rep. Jamie Raskin said.
May 01, 2024
The U.S. Senate Budget Committee held a hearing Wednesday morning on the ongoing efforts of major fossil fuel companies and trade groups to delay climate action while deceptively painting themselves as part of the solution.
The hearing was based on an investigation launched by the House Oversight Committee in 2021 into the activities and communications of Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce. Both committees released the resulting report, Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil's Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change, on Tuesday.
"Our investigation uncovered compelling evidence of aggressive industry deceit which continues to this day," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said in his Senate testimony Wednesday. "The joint report and documents we discovered show how, time and again, the biggest oil and gas corporations say one thing for the purposes of public consumption but do something completely different to protect their profits. Company officials will admit the terrifying reality of their business model behind closed doors but say something entirely different, false, and soothing to the public."
"Policymakers and prosecutors must act swiftly to hold this rogue industry accountable for the climate chaos it has knowingly caused and bring its days of drill, deny, and delay to an end."
Raskin detailed key findings of the House investigation. The companies and trade groups:
- Made public pledges to abide by the Paris agreement that they internally acknowledged were impossible;
- Shifted from denying climate science to boosting natural gas and lying about being part of the solution;
- Publicized investments in low-carbon technologies that they internally admitted were unlikely to work;
- Depended on trade associations to promote their climate deceptions and lobby against effective climate action; and
- Used partnerships with academic institutes to greenwash their image while also influencing research and gaining access to politicians.
"Big Oil's corruption is even more far-reaching than we feared," Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, told Common Dreams in response to the hearing. "This investigation exposes how these companies have not only lied to the public for decades, but infiltrated the halls of academia to peddle their climate disinformation."
Raskin gave several notable examples of corporate malfeasance from the House investigation. For example, while BP promotes its commitment to the Paris agreement on its website, it admitted in an email that "no one is committed to anything, other than to stay in the game." He also noted that ExxonMobil spent almost 50% of the amount it used for researching and developing algae as a biofuel between 2009 and 2023 on advertising its efforts.
Further, the companies did not cooperate with the investigation: They had to be subpoenaed to provide meaningful information, and they buried substantial documents in a "paper blizzard" of useless files like mass emails.
"If the companies had fully complied in good faith, who knows what else we might have uncovered?" Raskin asked.
In addition to Raskin, the Senate committee also heard testimony from Sharon Eubanks, the former director of the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Tobacco Litigation Team; Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor of environmental science and policy and the director of the University of Miami's Climate Accountability Lab; Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and managing director of the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax Investment Center; and Michael Ratner, a specialist in energy policy at the Congressional Research Service.
"As a scholar of disinformation, I do not use the word 'lie' lightly," Supran said during his testimony. "But no other word adequately describes the oil industry's brazen efforts to mislead the public about its history of misleading the public."
Jamie Henn of Fossil Free Media said the hearing was a "huge deal, not just because of what it's revealing about Big Oil's history of climate deception, but because it's laying the groundwork for Congress to finally hold the industry accountable and make polluters pay."
Both speakers at the hearing and senators outlined various ways the industry might be held accountable. Raskin highlighted the similarities between Big Oil's lies about its products' impact on climate and the tobacco industry's lies about its products' impact on human health.
"More than 20 years ago, the Department of Justice brought a precedent-setting case against the cigarette companies," Raskin said. "That case liberated our minds from the tyranny of Big Tobacco and reverberated across America and the world. As a result, the public learned about the massive disinformation campaign waged by the tobacco industry; the companies were ordered to cease and desist their propaganda and to start telling the truth to the public; and governments and people around the world used the facts uncovered to battle the tobacco industry effectively for financial restitution and defense of the public health."
The possibility that the DOJ could bring a similar case against oil companies was reinforced by Eubanks, who told the Senate: "There exists solid evidentiary basis to move forward with a request to the Department of Justice to investigate the actions of the fossil fuel industry. Just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering complaint against the industry, given the similarities of the fraudulent acts, and the government's successful case against tobacco, there is adequate foundation for building a case."
In response, Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said, "It is time for the Department of Justice to step in and defeat Big Oil's efforts to withhold the truth from the American people."
Another avenue for accountability was laid out by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who spoke up in favor of his Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, which would use science attributing carbon dioxide and methane emissions to specific companies to then charge those companies for their climate pollution, putting the funds to work for a just transition to renewable energy.
"The idea is simple: The companies who pollute the most, should pay the most," Van Hollen said.
Climate and good governance groups supported the move toward accountability.
"Policymakers and prosecutors must act swiftly to hold this rogue industry accountable for the climate chaos it has knowingly caused and bring its days of drill, deny, and delay to an end," DiPaola told Common Dreams.
David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Climate Program, said of fossil fuel deception, "It's criminal conduct, and our leaders and legal system should treat it as such."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) pointed out that it is now possible to attribute rising temperatures, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and more frequent and extreme wildfires to the extraction and burning of oil, gas, and coal.
"This joint congressional investigation is an important step toward ending the fossil fuel industry's lies and obstruction of critical climate action," Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director in UCS' Climate and Energy Program, said. "The internal industry documents released to the public and the testimony at this hearing add to the already considerable mountain of evidence illustrating misconduct by fossil fuel corporations and their surrogates. We urge policymakers and public prosecutors to move expeditiously to pursue accountability through every means at their disposal."
"We're getting to the point where it may be politically possible to actually take on the bad guys."
Reflecting on the hearing on his Substack, Bill McKibbenpointed to another important development it represented: a shift in the attitude of senior Democrats toward fossil gas, which both Raskin and Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) noted was not as clean as the industry pretended. In the past, Democratic leaders including former President Barack Obama had promoted the idea that gas could be a bridge fuel because it emits less carbon dioxide than coal when burned. But new evidence revealing how much methane its production leaks belies this claim.
"The fossil fuel industry desperately wants to lock in more dependence on fracked gas while they still can—that's why they reacted with such white-hot anger to the Biden administration's pause on permits for new [liquefied natural gas] export facilities earlier this year," McKibben wrote. "But the hope raised by today's hearing is that—if [President Joe] Biden wins reelection—that pause may become permanent, and the expansion of natural gas will finally be halted, recognized for the deep peril that it is."
While the Biden administration has so far focused on promoting renewable energy rather than reducing fossil fuel production, with measures such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the hearing showed that "we're getting to the point where it may be politically possible to actually take on the bad guys," McKibben said.
Indeed, Raskin did not mince works as he concluded his testimony. He referenced Jared Diamond's book Collapse and its assertion that one contribution to a civilization's demise is "the capture of political and social power by a narrow subset of society, which is committed to its own profit and power rather than the common good of the whole society and therefore refuses to take the steps necessary for collective survival."
"Big Oil's campaign of deception and distraction undermines the efforts we need to mobilize our people and government to save our climate, our habitat, and our species," Raskin said. "Unless the deception ends, and until the industry is held accountable, we are unlikely ever to be able to muster the national political will to effectively tackle climate change."
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Dozens of UK Universities Warned of Criminal Liability Over Israeli Weapons Investments
"Aiding, abetting and in any other way assisting in the commission of a war crime including 'providing the means for its commission' is a war crime," said the director of a legal group.
May 01, 2024
As U.S. campus protests and the aggressive police response galvanized a growing number of British students to set up their own encampments at universities across the country on Wednesday, a legal group informed dozens of higher education institutions in the U.K. that their investments in weapons manufacturers could leave them open to criminal liability stemming from human rights violations by Israel.
The International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) warned officers at 82 universities that if they have profited from investments in companies including Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, and BAE Systems, their financial holdings may be linked to weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces in its current escalation against Gaza.
"Aiding, abetting and in any other way assisting in the commission of a war crime including 'providing the means for its commission' is a war crime," said ICJP director Tayab Ali, citing Article 25 of the Rome Statute.
The companies in question also "have a track record of providing equipment that has been used in home demolitions, the illegal Israeli separation wall in the West Bank and around Jerusalem, and other tools of apartheid," said the ICJP, making the universities potentially complicit in Israel's policies in the occupied West Bank.
Dania Abul Haj, senior legal officer for ICJP, said in a statement that "the massive crackdown on civil liberties we are seeing in the U.S. is a huge catalyst" for the group's letter to the universities.
"This money is paid to the universities by the students, and yet their voice is being totally disregarded in how it is being immorally invested," said Abul Haj.
Solidarity encampments were set up at schools including University of Warwick, University of Bristol, and Newcastle University this week.
Students in the U.S., U.K., and other countries have demanded that universities divest from companies in tech, weapons manufacturing, and other industries that contract with Israel.
Student organizers at the University of York celebrated last week as administrators announced it had divested from companies that "primarily make or sell weapons," following mass protests, marches, and rallies held at the school.
"Investment in these companies was already morally bankrupt," Abul Haj toldMiddle East Eye. "In the current circumstances, it is beyond belief that universities, which are educational institutions, paving the way for future generations of leaders and politicians, would continue to invest in them."
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