August, 25 2023, 04:08pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jackson Chiappinelli, Earthjustice, (585) 402-2005, jchiappinelli@earthjustice.org
Stephannie Kettle, Healthy Gulf, (407) 361-9432, skettle@healthygulf.org
Brittany Miller, Friends of the Earth, (202) 222-0746, bmiller@foe.org
Kristen Monsell, Center for Biological Diversity, (914) 806-3467, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
Shannon Van Hoesen, Sierra Club, shannon.vanhoesen@sierraclub.org
Anne Hawke, NRDC, (202) 329-1463, ahawke@nrdc.org
Marleen Villanueva, Bayou City Waterkeeper, (608) 449-0467, marleen@bayoucitywaterkeeper.org
Lawsuit Challenges Massive Offshore Lease Sale for Failing to Consider Gulf Communities, Climate
Gulf community and environmental groups sued the Interior Department today to challenge an offshore oil and gas lease sale that would offer up more than 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. The department plans to hold the sale Sept. 27.
Lease Sale 261, which the Biden administration canceled in 2021, is the last of three offshore oil and gas lease sales mandated under the Inflation Reduction Act. Lease Sales 258 and 259, held in December 2022 and March 2023, were also revived by the IRA. Those lease sales were challenged in federal court for failing to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.
Today’s lawsuit challenges the upcoming lease sale for violating NEPA because Interior did not consider the health threats to Gulf Coast communities living near oil refineries and other polluting drilling infrastructure. The department also failed to adequately consider the climate harm from this massive new source of fossil fuel production. The lease sale could result in the production of more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years, resulting in more than 370 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
The department agreed to limit the leasing area to reduce the risk of driving the endangered Rice’s whale to extinction. Scientists estimate there may be only 51 Rice’s whales left on Earth.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of Healthy Gulf, Bayou City Waterkeeper, Friends of the Earth, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club.
In September, Interior is expected to release its final proposed five-year program for offshore oil and gas leasing. The plan, which lasts through 2028, could include as many as 11 new offshore lease sales. Holding 11 new fossil fuel auctions would sanction up to 70 years of additional fossil-fuel extraction with the potential to emit up to 3.5 billion tons of carbon pollution.
Statements from Earthjustice, its clients and partners:
“Once again, the Biden administration has fallen short of the federal law by neglecting to consider the impact of this massive oil sale on Gulf communities and the climate,” said Earthjustice attorney George Torgun. “We’re pleased that Interior excluded habitat for the nearly extinct Gulf of Mexico whale from this lease sale, but it’s equally critical that Interior builds on this step and protects climate and Gulf communities from the harms of leasing.”
“Unfortunately, given BOEM’s history of sacrificing the Gulf of Mexico to Big Oil, this lease sale decision comes as no surprise,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth. “Our lawsuit should also come as no surprise, since BOEM continues to rely on the same outdated, broken environmental analysis. If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop. We are going to keep fighting until the Gulf of Mexico is off the table for good.”
“As steward of the country’s public lands and waters, Interior has a duty to fully consider the harms offshore leasing can cause, from air pollution to oil spills, and beyond,” said Julia Forgie, attorney for NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council). “This vast lease sale — for millions of acres — poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well. We are holding the agency to its obligation to carefully assess these risks and the climate fallout of this giveaway to Big Oil.”
“It’s mind-boggling that in this summer of deadly fossil fuel-driven record heat, fires and flooding the Biden administration couldn’t be bothered to look carefully at the damage this lease sale will cause to people, endangered wildlife and the climate,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Across the country we’re seeing lethal wildfires, boiling ocean temperatures and mass coral die-offs, all caused or exacerbated by a climate unnaturally warmed by fossil fuel emissions. We’ve got to stop letting oil and gas companies make it worse by drilling in our oceans.”
“It is time to transition away from fossil fuels,” said Kristen Schlemmer, legal director and waterkeeper for Bayou City Waterkeeper. “Continued development in the Gulf of Mexico creates unfair burdens on communities in Houston and across the Gulf South. Moving forward with Lease Sale 261 means more drilling in the years to come. It means more facilities in our backyards. It means higher rates of cancer and heart and lung diseases, and it means more risks during major storms.”
“Selling public lands and waters to Big Polluters is incompatible with achieving the ambitious climate goals the Biden Administration itself has set,” said Devorah Ancel, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program senior attorney. “Fossil fuel extraction is destructive to communities, ecosystems, wildlife, and our climate. The devastating effects of climate change, from heat waves to storms, are particularly harmful to frontline communities, as this summer has shown. Moving forward with this lease sale locks us into extraction for decades to come, right as we should be transitioning to clean energy.”
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.
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Bipartisan House Amendment to Ban US Cluster Bomb Exports Fails
"The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup after generations of use," said Rep. Betty McCollum. "These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles."
Sep 27, 2023
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan amendment to the 2024 military spending bill that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions—which are banned under a treaty ratified by more than 100 nations but not the United States—to any country.
The House voted 160-269 on the amendment to next year's National Defense Authorization Act co-sponsored by Reps. Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). Seventy-five Democrats voted for the measure, while 137 voted "no"; 85 GOP lawmakers approved the amendment while 132 opposed it.
The vote took place less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States would send more cluster munitions to Ukraine.
"Many of us have this idea of American exceptionalism, that America is set apart from the rest of the world. Well, that's certainly true when it comes to cluster munitions and not in the way that we want," Jacobs said on the House floor before Wednesday's vote.
"America is an outlier. We are one of the few countries that hasn't become party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and that is a grave mistake," she asserted, referring to a landmark 2008 treaty, to which 112 nations are parties.
Jacobs continued:
These weapons maim and kill indiscriminately. In 2021, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that over 97% of casualties from cluster bomb remnants were civilians, and two-thirds of those were children. That's because these bomblets are small, colorful, and interesting shapes, so to children they look like toys. So when kids find these unexploded bomblets stuck in trees, or in the water, or simply on the ground and try to pick them up and play with them, they could lose a limb or their life in the blink of an eye.... These weapons are unpredictable, and the human cost is far too high to justify.
Since the end of the Vietnam War half a century ago, unexploded cluster munitions have killed approximately 20,000 civilians in Laos, where the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides in World War II combined. The U.S. rained as many as 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, and less than 1% of the unexploded bomblets have been cleared since. They are still killing civilians today.
"These cluster bombs are indiscriminate," Gaetz said on the House floor Wednesday. "They've killed tens of thousands of people... and when this is all done, we'll be right back here on the floor appropriating money to de-mine the cluster bombs that we're now sending, which seems ludicrous to me."
"These cluster bombs are indiscriminate. They've killed tens of thousands of people."
Since Vietnam, the U.S. has used cluster bombs in wars including the 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia; the 1991 Desert Storm war in Iraq and Kuwait; and in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen during the so-called War on Terror. U.S. cluster munitions have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, cancers, and other ailments.
Earlier this year, the U.S. began sending artillery-fired cluster munitions to Ukraine. Russian invaders and Ukrainian homeland defenders have both killed and wounded soldiers and civilians with cluster bombs during the war.
"The decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine in my opinion was unnecessary and a sad mistake," McCollum told her House colleagues Wednesday. "The legacy of U.S. cluster munitions... undermines our moral authority and places the U.S. in a position that directly contradicts 23 of our NATO allies who have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions."
"The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup after generations of use," McCollum added. "These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles."
"Sending these weapons anywhere makes us complicit in unavoidable civilian harm and creates blowback that undermines our national security."
Last week, Biden informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the United States will provide Kyiv with long-range missiles with cluster munition warheads.
"Let's be clear," Jacobs added. "This isn't about one country, this is not about Ukraine. This is about protecting civilian lives and ensuring our national security all over the world. Because sending these weapons anywhere makes us complicit in unavoidable civilian harm and creates blowback that undermines our national security."
Multiple efforts by lawmakers to ban the export of U.S. cluster munitions have failed to advance. Earlier this year, the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee voted down a resolution proposed by Omar and Jacobs (D-Calif.), while backing another led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—whose controversial sponsorship doomed the proposal.
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'Affirming Apartheid': Biden Admin to Allow Israel Into Visa Waiver Program
One critic called it "an outrageous endorsement of the Israeli government's systematic discrimination against Palestinian Americans and a reward to the most extremist, racist government in Israel's history."
Sep 27, 2023
Human rights advocates on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Biden administration's move to let Israelis apply to travel to the United States without visas, and vice versa, despite charges that Israel's treatment of Palestinian Americans violates the program's legal requirements.
The U.S. departments of Homeland Security and State confirmed that by November 30, "the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) will be updated to allow citizens and nationals of Israel to apply to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for up to 90 days without first obtaining a U.S. visa."
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said that the designation of Israel into the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) "represents over a decade of work and coordination," and "is an important recognition of our shared security interests and the close cooperation between our two countries."
While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that "this important achievement will enhance freedom of movement for U.S. citizens, including those living in the Palestinian territories or traveling to and from them," rights groups and some American lawmakers have been pushing back against such claims.
U.S. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), joined by over a dozen colleagues, wrote in a letter to Blinken earlier this month that according to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in this summer, "Israel is not expected to fully implement one system that all U.S. citizen travelers can use for purposes of visa waiver travel until May 1, 2024, well beyond the September 30, 2023 deadline for meeting program requirements."
"The MOU states that Israel will employ 'an interim process for a U.S. citizen who is a resident of the West Bank.' Such a two-tiered system of entry inherently violates the administration's own standard for reciprocity that 'blue is blue'—meaning 'equal treatment and freedom of travel for all U.S. citizens regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity," the senators noted. "We have already learned of a number of U.S. citizen families who flew to Israel to take advantage of visa waiver travel under the new MOU who were denied entry for having Gaza IDs."
Van Hollen and Schatz, along with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.), reiterated their concerns in a joint statement Wednesday, saying that "to date, Israel has failed to meet the 'blue is blue' requirement. Adherence to this important American tenet of reciprocity and equal treatment of all U.S. citizens is critical to the integrity of the Visa Waiver Program, and we are deeply concerned with the administration's decision to move forward in violation of that principle."
The Biden administration's highly anticipated announcement follows a related lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), whose director, Abed Ayoub, said Wednesday that "by endorsing a tiered system for U.S. citizens, our government has given its tacit approval to Israel's prejudiced policies and apartheid actions."
Especially faced with what is widely considered Israel's most far-right government in the nation's history—reaffirmed by stunts like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presenting a map of "The New Middle East" without Palestine during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week—a growing number of rights groups have accused Israel of apartheid.
Adalah Justice Project executive director Sandra Tamari declared Wednesday that "apartheid is not only Israeli policy, it is U.S. policy too."
"Israel's discrimination is especially egregious against Palestinian Americans with ties to Gaza," Tamari stressed, "making reunification of families torn apart by Israel's siege and blockade of Gaza near impossible."
Leaders from Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American Islamic Relations, Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP Action), Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights also denounced the Biden administration's designation.
JVP Action executive director Stefanie Fox called it "an outrageous endorsement of the Israeli government's systematic discrimination against Palestinian Americans and a reward to the most extremist, racist government in Israel's history."
"Once again, the U.S. is singling out Israel for special and exceptionalized treatment at the expense of the rights of Palestinian Americans," she added. "Jewish Voice for Peace Action calls for the immediate reversal of this decision."
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, suggested that "by choosing to make this reckless move ahead of the September 30, 2023 end of the federal fiscal year, it is also clear the issue of reciprocity was not the only barrier to Israel's eligibility to enter the VWP."
"Moving to admit them now so that an application would not have to restart under potentially different (and post-Covid) visa refusal rates—an additional requirement of the law—is another sign of the prioritization of politics over our rights," he continued. "With this move, Israel has extended its discriminatory apartheid laws to American citizens with our own government's enthusiastic support."
Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) director of advocacy for Israel/Palestine Adam Shapiro, a plaintiff in ADC's lawsuit, said Wednesday that "the U.S. should halt implementation of the visa waiver for Israel at least until a judge reviews what we believe to be the government's arbitrary and capricious actions that enshrine Israeli apartheid in a U.S. program."
"Separate can never be equal, as was determined decades ago in the fight for civil rights in this country," Shapiro added. "Forty countries participate in the VWP, and none have formal arrangements to discriminate against American citizens; only Israel has demanded and been granted this unconscionable favor by the U.S. government."
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'Catastrophe' Averted as Judge Upholds California County's Rejection of Exxon Oil Trucking Plan
"It's time for Exxon to accept that the community won't support drilling and transporting oil in their backyard," said one advocate.
Sep 27, 2023
Public health and environmental advocates in Santa Barbara County, California on Wednesday hailed a district court ruling one advocate said placed "the safety of our communities, climate, and coastlines first," as oil giant ExxonMobil's proposal to drive oil tankers down coastal highways was struck down.
Judge Dolly M. Gee in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California upheld the county's 2022 rejection of the company's proposal. Last year the county cited the harm that a potential oil spill would do to biodiversity, water safety, and cultural resources when it refused to allow Exxon to truck oil.
The company sued the county, and late last year a federal judge granted a motion by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), which aimed to intervene in the case on behalf of Indigenous tribes and environmental groups.
The outcome of the case on Wednesday, prohibiting the company from transporting millions of gallons of oil per week, will keep Exxon from moving towards resuming operations on offshore platforms and at a former processing facility, said EDC.
"ExxonMobil's plan to restart its offshore platforms and truck millions of gallons per week through Santa Barbara County is reckless, dangerous, and totally unwelcome by this community," said Linda Krop, chief counsel of group. "Recent oil tanker truck accidents and offshore oil spills show just how dangerous this plan is."
The company aimed to truck the oil on coastal Highway 101 and Route 166, sparking fears of a disaster like the Refugio State Beach oil spill of 2015, which sent more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil into a ravine and ultimately the Pacific Ocean. The spill created a 10-square-mile oil slick that injured and killed wildlife including otters, humpback whales, and brown pelicans, and led to the closure of Exxon's offshore drilling operations.
Gee's ruling was handed down two years after another oil spill near Huntington Beach, which caused oil to seep into a marsh area that is home to more than 80 bird species.
"I'm relieved the judge agreed it was reasonable to deny Exxon's dangerous trucking project. Trucking oil through Santa Barbara County is so obviously risky for the people, wildlife, and coastline," said Liz Jones, an attorney at CBD. "It's time for Exxon to accept that the community won't support drilling and transporting oil in their backyard."
Oil truck accidents are already a problem in California, with 258 trucking incidents reported from 2015-21 along Exxon's proposed route. Eight accidents that have taken place since 2007 have been deadly, killing six people and causing numerous injuries, fires, road closures, and oil spills.
"The next accident is a matter of 'when,' not 'if,' based on oil companies' terrible track record in Santa Barbara County," said Jones. "The costs of oil spills are too high to risk, and this decision is a well-deserved win for the community, ocean life, and ecosystems."
In 2021, CBD posted a map on social media showing the critical habitats—supporting steelhead trout, sea otters, salamanders, and other wildlife—that lie close to the company's proposed trucking route.
"It's incredible that this project would even be considered," said Michael Lyons, board president of Get Out Oil! "Each tanker truck and its full load of oil is essentially a ticking time bomb that threatens the lives of those on the highways and our environment."
With the district court ruling, said Lyons, "an oil spill catastrophe has been prevented."
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