January, 23 2023, 04:48pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kayley Shoup, Citizens Caring for the Future, (575) 302-7587, kayley.shoup.ccff@gmail.com
Rose Rushing, Western Environmental Law Center, (505) 278-9577, rushing@westernlaw.org
Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians, jnichols@wildearthguardians.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Lawsuit Aims to Defend Climate, Clean Air From Fracking in New Mexico’s Permian Basin
Biden Administration Approved Trump-Era Oil, Gas Leases
SANTE FE, New Mexico
Conservation groups, led by citizens from Carlsbad, N.M., filed suit today to overturn the Biden administration’s approval of nearly 6,000 acres of oil and gas leases in southeast New Mexico’s Permian Basin.
Originally authorized by the Trump administration, the challenged leases were sold just days before President Biden took office and announced a pause on new federal oil and gas leasing to protect the climate. In spite of Biden’s promise, the U.S. Interior Department formally approved the Trump-era leasing on May 12, 2021.
By auctioning these lands, the Interior Department handed the industry the right to extract and produce oil and gas, opening the door for massive amounts of climate and air pollution. In spite of this, the agency refused to disclose the costs of more oil and gas development and to take steps to limit or even prevent new development to protect people and communities.
“Those of us living in Carlsbad continue to be alarmed by our ever-degrading air quality and environment in the region,” said Kayley Shoup with Citizens Caring for the Future. “Any direction you look in southeast New Mexico your eyes will be met with rigs, flares and pollution at a mass scale. This devastation can even be seen in space as NASA has recently identified a super-emitting site mere miles from Carlsbad. Unmitigated oil and gas production on public lands here in New Mexico has already taken away our health and has stifled our ability to nurture industries such as agriculture. We see leasing out our public lands for years to come as a direct attack on our ability to build a viable economy in our region in the future. A future where the curtain will inevitably be drawn on oil and gas production once and for all.”
“Oil and gas companies are extracting record profits while outsourcing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to the public,” said Rose Rushing, a Farmington-based attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “The most marginalized communities in New Mexico are usually the most affected by the oil and gas industry’s toxic legacy in our backyards, and also stand to suffer the most from climate change. Frontline communities are being forced to pay for oil and gas extraction with our health and climate stability. The science is clear: We must stop drilling for oil and gas if we are going to avert catastrophic climate change.”
Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, challenges the Biden administration’s decision to uphold the Trump-era leases. It targets the administration’s failure to address the harm from expanded oil and gas extraction to the climate and regional air quality.
“By going forward full steam with the January lease sale, the Bureau of Land Management is in violation of its moral and ethical responsibility for the common good and land trust stewardship, foundational to the agency,” said Sister Joan Brown of New Mexico/El Paso Interfaith Power and Light. “The Bureau must take seriously its responsibility to reduce climate pollution, health risks, and address care for the sacred lands in New Mexico.”
Oil and gas extraction in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s largest oil producing regions, is a huge source of air pollution and has fueled a surge in smog in the region, especially in the town of Carlsbad. It’s also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Oil and gas in the Permian is a huge source of potent methane gas and when it’s burned it releases massive amounts of carbon.
Recent reports indicate that unchecked fracking in the Permian Basin will unleash more than 55 billion metric tons of carbon by 2050, exhausting 10% of the global carbon budget needed to limit worldwide average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“While it’s shameful President Biden is not living up to his promise to pause new oil and gas leasing to protect the climate, it’s even more shameful he’s rubberstamped Trump-era leases,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “For the climate, we have to stop selling our public lands out to the oil and gas industry.”
Several analyses show climate pollution from the world’s already producing fossil fuel developments, if fully developed, will push warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius. Avoiding such warming requires ending new investment in fossil fuel projects and phasing out production to keep as much as 40% of already-developed fields in the ground.
“Any expansion of fracking leases belies climate science and promises more harm to frontline communities and endangered animals like lesser prairie chickens,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This lawsuit will hold the Biden administration accountable to its own climate, environmental justice and biodiversity goals.”
In 2022 the Biden administration agreed to reconsider millions of acres of oil and gas leases approved by the Trump administration. That agreement, however, did not include the leases sold in New Mexico in January 2021.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
(520) 623-5252LATEST NEWS
'Killing Is Normalized': IDF Soldier Speaks Out About Orders to Shoot Civilians in Gaza
The commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
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Another Israel Defense Forces soldier has spoken out publicly against the IDF's brutalization of civilians in Gaza.
In an interview with the British Sky News Monday, a reservist who has served three tours of duty in Gaza spoke candidly about orders he and other soldiers received to shoot any person arbitrarily who entered defined "no-go zones," regardless of whether they posed a threat.
The soldier gave his testimony anonymously for fear of being labeled a "traitor." However, he identified himself as a reservist from the 252nd Division who was stationed at the Netzarim Corridor, a road which divides North and South Gaza.
The area has been one of the most critical strategic points for Israel's occupation of Gaza, allowing control over the flow of aid and people.
The soldiers, stationed on the edge of a civilian neighborhood in the homes of displaced Palestinians, were ordered by their commanders to kill anyone who passed an "imaginary line" that marked the beginning of the military stronghold, the soldier said.
"We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
"It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle," he said.
The soldier said that the prevailing attitude among the troops was that all Palestinians were "terrorists," and that this attitude was reinforced by commanders.
"They say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn't be there, and if he still comes, it means he's a terrorist," he said. "This is what they tell you. But I don't really think it's true. It's just poor people, civilians, that don't really have too many choices."
He said that when soldiers in the corridor kill civilians, a lot of them "think that they did something good."
That sense of impunity, he said, comes from the higher-ups.
"Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don't face the consequences of that," he said.
"You can't be in this scenario for so long and not normalize it," he said. "Killing is normalized, and you don't see the problem."
This anonymous soldier is the latest of many who have decided to speak out against atrocities their military has committed.
His testimony comes on the heels of a harrowing Haaretz expose, in which several other Israeli soldiers described being ordered to shoot Palestinian aid-seekers, turning the U.S.-Israeli administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites into "killing fields." Others provided The Associated Press with video of soldiers bombarding civilians in an aid site with pepper spray and stun grenades.
Others have spoken out against the attacks on civilians near the Israeli stronghold at Netzarim.
In April, a report by the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence detailed many more accounts of brutality over the first year-and-a-half of the war. It included accounts of Israeli soldiers razing agricultural land, bulldozing entire city blocks, and designating "large swathes of the land" that "were turned into massive kill zones."
"All of them were wiped off the face of the Earth. Annihilation, expropriation, and expulsion are immoral and must never be normalized or legitimized," the report said.
The soldier who spoke to Sky News said his deployment left a similar stain on his conscience.
"I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country," he said. "I think the war is... a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over."
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"The increasing erosion of the rule of law is deeply concerning," said an Oxfam campaigns manager.
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Anti-poverty organization Oxfam on Monday expressed grave concern over reports that Russia has been increasingly deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine.
The Associated Press reported late last week that two Dutch intelligence agencies are claiming that Russia has been ramping up its use of chemical weapons in its war against Ukraine. Among the chemical weapons allegedly being deployed by Russia are chloropicrin, a banned poison gas that was used by European powers during World War I, and CS gas, which is typically used as a riot control agent.
Sarah Redd, Oxfam's advocacy and campaigns manager in Ukraine, called reports of banned chemical weapons use deeply troubling and called for a full investigation into the matter.
"Oxfam is appalled at the recent intensification of violence against civilians in Ukraine, especially the reports of Russia's use of chemical weapons, which would be an egregious violation of international law," she said. "The increasing erosion of the rule of law is deeply concerning. Such laws were put in place to prevent humanity from sliding back into a darker chapter of history. Oxfam calls for an immediate and independent international investigation into these allegations and to hold those responsible to account."
Russia is a signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty first drafted and enacted in the 1990s that bars the use of both chloropicrin and CS gas in war. This makes Russia subject to potential investigations carried out by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, although such an investigation can only take place if requested by member states.
Ukraine has claimed that Russia has carried out more than 9,000 chemical weapons attacks ever since it launched its invasion of the country more than three years ago. During the 2024 election campaign, President Donald Trump claimed that he could bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia war within a single day although so far fighting between the two nations has only intensified.
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'Indefensible': Trump Budget Law Subsidizes Private Jet Owners While Taking Healthcare From Millions
A provision of the budget law that President Donald Trump signed last week will leave taxpayers to "pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers."
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The Republican budget measure that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law late last week contains a provision that analysts say will allow private jet owners to write off the full cost of their aircraft in the first year of purchase, a boon to the ultra-rich that comes as millions of people are set to lose healthcare under the same legislation.
FlyUSA, a private aviation provider, gushed in a blog post that with final passage of the unpopular budget reconciliation package, "business jet ownership has never looked more fiscally attractive or more fun to explain to your accountant."
The law, crafted by congressional Republicans and approved with only GOP support, permanently restores a major corporate tax break known as 100% bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the costs of certain assets in the first year of purchase rather than writing them off over time.
Forbes noted that the bonus depreciation policy "applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales."
"Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class."
Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, called bonus depreciation "a massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet."
"A corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years," Collins wrote. "This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers."
"Subsidizing more private jets on a warming planet is reckless and indefensible," he added.
The National Business Aviation Association, a lobbying group for the private aviation industry, celebrated passage of the Republican legislation, specifically welcoming the bonus depreciation policy as "effective for incentivizing aircraft purchase." (The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy argues that "depreciation tax breaks have never been shown to encourage more capital investment.")
Meanwhile, communities across the United States are bracing for the law's deep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, which are expected to impose damaging strains on state budgets and strip food benefits and health coverage from millions of low-income Americans.
"Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. "This is certainly one of the cruelest bills in American history, backtracking on the country's painfully slow history of expanding healthcare coverage and, equally remarkably, taking food away from the hungry."
"That's a lot of needless suffering just to make the richest Americans richer," he added.
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