January, 04 2023, 12:20pm EDT
New Liberty Mutual CEO Tim Sweeney Faces Pressure to Act on Climate
Global campaign calls on Sweeney to stop insuring fossil fuel expansion
BOSTON, Mass.
Liberty Mutual’s new CEO Tim Sweeney, who officially took helm of the Boston-based insurer on Sunday, is facing calls to clean up his company’s climate and human rights record. Activists gathered outside the insurer’s Boston headquarters this week to ask Sweeney if he will step up as a climate leader and stop insuring fossil fuel expansion projects (photos here).
“A global campaign of climate advocates, Indigenous leaders, youth activists is calling on Sweeney to change the company’s course today and make Liberty Mutual a bold leader among U.S. insurers,” said Elana Sulakshana, Senior Energy Finance Campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “Fossil fuel projects cannot be built or operated without insurance. As insurers around the world adopt policies limiting their support for these dirty energy projects, Liberty Mutual remains a top fossil fuel insurer and plays an increasingly key role in enabling the expansion of coal, oil, and gas infrastructure that the climate cannot afford.”
Although Liberty Mutual adopted restrictions on insuring and investing in coal in 2019, the policy is rife with loopholes that allow it to continue to insure new coal-fired power plants globally. With zero policies on oil and gas whatsoever, Liberty is lagging behind global and U.S. peers when it comes to climate action.
While it continues to insure and invest in fossil fuel projects and companies, Liberty is already taking an economic toll from the impacts of climate change. This past year, Liberty had among the highest catastrophe losses among US insurers, due to Hurricane Ian and other climate-fueled disasters. Sweeney works out of Liberty Mutual’s Boston headquarters, which are themselves at risk of flooding if global temperatures warm beyond 3ºC.
“It’s time for Liberty Mutual to stop fueling global warming,” said Massachusetts State Representative Dylan Fernandes, who represents Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties. “In Massachusetts, we see firsthand how climate change is causing flooding, heatwaves, and economic fallout. It is never acceptable to profit from the destruction of the health of our planet and its people. As the new CEO, Sweeney must divest from climate destruction, and instead invest in solutions that protect our planet and communities.”
As Liberty’s leadership transition unfolds, there are a number of decisions that communities around the world will be watching closely. Frontline and Indigenous leaders have reached out directly to discuss the harmful impacts of projects Liberty is insuring on their lands and livelihoods, but have been met with silence from the company. It remains to be seen if Sweeney, an advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, will come to the table.
Liberty Mutual has come under fire for its insurance coverage of the Trans Mountain tar sands oil pipeline in Canada from First Nations and climate activists, but it has so far refused to cut ties. By contrast, twenty-two insurers have adopted policies limiting coverage for the tar sands oil sector, citing climate and human rights risks.
“For years, Liberty Mutual has ignored our letters and refused to sit down and hear our concerns about the multitude of risks facing the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. We have reviewed the pipeline under our own laws, and the Tsleil Waututh Nation continues to withhold our free, prior, and informed consent for the pipeline. We hope that CEO Sweeney will live up to his rhetoric on diversity, equity, and inclusion and stop insuring the Trans Mountain pipeline and other tar sands and fossil fuel projects that violate Indigenous rights and worsen the climate crisis,” said Charlene Aleck, spokesperson for Tsleil-Waututh Nation Sacred Trust Initiative.
In Uganda and Tanzania, activists are calling on Liberty Mutual to rule out support for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which would be the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world if constructed and has already displaced thousands of people. Unlike 22 global insurers, Liberty Mutual is still at risk of supporting the project, which is currently on the market for insurance coverage.
“EACOP is facing serious risks that financial institutions do not want to support: the destruction of ecologically diverse and wildlife-rich regions, a massive carbon footprint, and mounting community resistance. The #StopEACOP campaign urges CEO Sweeney to swiftly rule out any support for the project and for deadly fossil fuel expansion,” said Samuel Okulony of Environment Governance Institute, a Ugandan organization and member of the #StopEACOP Campaign.
Liberty Mutual has also been linked to offshore oil and gas drilling in Brazil and the expansion of coal-fired power in Southeast Asia, among other projects. According to the latest data from the California Department of Insurance, Liberty had $2.3 billion invested in fossil fuel companies.
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices staff in Tokyo, Japan, and Edmonton, Canada, plus thousands of volunteer scientists, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens around the world. We believe that a sustainable world can be created in our lifetime and that aggressive action must be taken immediately to leave a safe and secure world for our children.
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Supreme Court Urged to 'Rule Quickly' After Trump Immunity Arguments
"It'd be a travesty for justices to delay matters further," said one legal expert.
Apr 25, 2024
After about three hours of oral arguments Thursday on former President Donald Trump's immunity claims, legal experts and democracy defenders urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule swiftly, with just over six months until the November election.
Trump—the presumptive Republican candidate to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden, despite his 88 felony charges in four ongoing criminal cases—is arguing that presidential immunity should protect him from federal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Justices across the ideological spectrum didn't seem inclined to support Trump's broad immunity claims—which critics have said "reflect a misreading of constitutional text and history as well as this court's precedent." However, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) shared examples of what it would mean if they did.
"Trump could sell pardons, ambassadorships, and other official benefits to his wealthy donors, members of his clubs, or cronies who helped him commit other crimes," CREW warned. "Trump could sell nuclear codes and government secrets to help pay back crippling debts."
"But this isn't just about what Donald Trump could do. It's really about how total immunity for the president would threaten our democratic system of checks and balances," the group continued. "The president could order the military to assassinate activists, political opponents, members of Congress, or even Supreme Court justices, so long as he claimed it related to some official act."
After warning that a president could also order the occupation or closure of the Capitol or high court to prevent actions against him, CREW concluded that "the Supreme Court never should have taken this appeal up in the first place. They should rule quickly and shut these ludicrous claims down for good."
The organization was far from alone in demanding a quick decision from the nation's highest court.
"In the name of accountability, the court must not delay its decision," the Brennan Center for Justice said Thursday evening. "The Supreme Court's time is up. It needs to let the prosecution move forward. The court decided Bush v. Gore in three days—it should act with similar alacrity in deciding Trump v. U.S."
In Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 election, the high court issued a related stay on December 9, heard oral arguments on December 11, and issued a final decision on December 12.
On Thursday, the arguments "got away from the central question: Is a former president immune from criminal prosecution if he tried to overthrow a presidential election, using private means and the power of his office to do so?" the Brennan Center noted. "The answer is simple: No."
"It is not an 'official act' to try to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power or the Constitution, even if you conspire with other government officials to do it or use the Oval Office phone," the center said. "Trump's attorney was pushing the court to come up with a sea change in the law. That's unnecessary and a delay tactic that will hurt the pursuit of justice in this case."
In a departure from previous claims, Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer, "appeared to agree with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, that there are some allegations in the indictment that do not involve 'official acts' of the president," NBC Newsreported, noting questions from liberal Justice Elena Kagan and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee.
Barrett summarized various allegations from the indictment and in three cases—involving dishonest election claims, false allegations of fraud, and fake electors—Sauer conceded that Trump's alleged conduct sounded private, suggesting that a more narrow case against the ex-president that excluded any potential official acts could proceed.
Due to Trump attorney's concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there's now a very clear path for DOJ's case to go forward.\n\nIt'd be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.\n\nJustice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.\u2b07\ufe0f— (@)
According to NBC:
Matthew Seligman, a lawyer and a fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School who filed a brief backing prosecutors, said Sauer's concessions highlight that Trump is "not immune for the vast majority of the conduct alleged in the indictment."
Ultimately, he said, the case will go to trial "absent some external intervention—like Trump ordering [the Justice Department] to drop the charges" after having won the election.
At the same time, Sauer's backtracking might have little consequence from an electoral perspective. Further delay in a trial, which Sauer is close to achieving, is a form of victory in itself.
Slate's Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that when Barrett similarly questioned Michael Dreeben, the U.S. Department of Justice lawyer arguing the case for Smith, it seemed like they "were trying to work out some compromise wherein the trial court could distinguish between official and unofficial acts, then instruct the jury not to impose criminal liability on the former."
"It was fascinating to watch Barrett nodding along as Dreeben pitched a compromise that would largely preserve Smith's January 6 prosecution but limit what the jury could hear, or at least consider," Stern added. "That, though, would take months to suss out in the trial court. More delays!"
Stern and other experts signaled that the decision likely comes down to Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, with the three liberals seemingly supporting the prosecution of Trump and the other four conservatives suggesting it is unconstitutional.
People for the American Way president Svante Myrick said in a statement that "today's argument brought both good and bad news. It was chilling to hear Donald Trump's lawyer say that staging a military coup could be considered part of a president's official duties."
"Thankfully, the majority of the court, including conservative justices, did not seem to buy that very broad Trump argument that a former president is absolutely immune from prosecution under any circumstances," Myrick added. "On the other hand, it's not clear that there is a majority on this court that will quickly reject the immunity arguments and let the case go forward in time for a trial before the election. That's a huge concern."
Trump was not at the Supreme Court on Thursday; he was at his trial in New York, where he faces 34 counts for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle. The are two other cases: a federal one for mishandling classified material and another in Georgia for interfering with the last presidential contest.
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Stop the Money Pipeline co-director Alec Connon said: "To have any chance of reigning in the climate crisis, we must stop investing in fossil fuel expansion. Yet, Citibank is pumping billions of dollars into new coal, oil, and gas projects."
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