August, 14 2024, 01:31pm EDT
Major Power Milestone: Wind and Solar Energy Overtake Coal in First Half of 2024, Expected to Continue
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois
New federal data shows that wind and solar energy – due to coal plant retirements and the growth of renewable energy – generated more power this year so far than coal. The US is on track for wind and solar to outpace coal for the entire calendar year of 2024, including the hot summer months (when coal generation usually picks up).
Since its founding in 2009, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has helped secure the retirements of 385 coal plants in the United States, resulting in more than 54,000 lives saved, 84,000 heart attacks prevented, 892,000 asthma attacks prevented, and $25 billion in health care costs saved.
Jack Darin, Director of the Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter, released the following statement:
“Illinoisans should be proud of the work we’ve done to close our largest coal plants and leverage the power of clean energy to drive economic growth while reducing pollution that’s harmful to public health and our planet. Thanks to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of 2021, Illinois workers are now building the clean energy that is replacing old, dirty fossil fuels and bringing a brighter future to communities across our state.”
Ben Jealous, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, added:
“Wind and solar energy has long been the most cost effective choice for utilities, but now it has also outpaced coal generation as the top source of energy, further demonstrating that clean energy is critical to a reliable and affordable grid. This historic milestone marks a significant win for clean energy advocates, for ratepayers, and for people and communities across the country that simply want to breathe clean air, drink safe water, and worry less about climate disasters like floods and wildfires.
“For decades, the Sierra Club has fought to move America Beyond Coal and onto a clean, reliable, and affordable grid. To date, the Beyond Coal campaign has secured the retirement of 385 coal plants and counting, and on August 16th, we celebrate the two year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which made historic investments in clean energy and clean energy jobs. Together, families across the country are saving money, enjoying good paying jobs, breathing clean air, and drinking safe water.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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'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."
Jul 07, 2025
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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Oxfam Says Russian Use of Chemical Weapons in Ukraine Would Be 'Egregious Violation of International law'
"The increasing erosion of the rule of law is deeply concerning," said an Oxfam campaigns manager.
Jul 07, 2025
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."
Jul 07, 2025
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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